Boomers Abroad

Description

The Passage programs for middle-schoolers, in either the British Virgin Islands or Montana, have the same components and basic framework as VISIONS programs for teens: service, cross-cultural learning and adventurous exploration in a supportive, inter-dependent small group setting. Participants will be fully engaged and appropriately challenged, members of a family-like team that lives and works together to achieve shared goals. Both Passage programs aim to give participants a wider perspective, increased self-confidence, greater self-awareness and respect for others, rewards that will help pave the way for the high school years just around the corner.

The Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeast Montana has been home to VISIONS groups off and on since 1992. We will live together in the Head Start or another community building in either Lame Deer, the central town on the reservation, or 20 minutes away in Birney Village, a tiny enclave of 50 families on the Tongue River. Service projects could include renovating playgrounds, building handicapped ramps or making repairs to elders homes, organizing an activities day with Cheyenne Children Services or making picnic tables for public spaces, to name a few.

Excursions will include overnight backpacking, hiking, and trips to the Medicine Wheel in the Big Horn Mountains and the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument, site of Custer's Last Stand. We'll try to get a glimpse of the tribe's buffalo herd that summers in the mountains. We will certainly attend the Lame Deer pow wow, learn traditional beadwork from Florence Running Wolf, share a sweat lodge with her husband, Mike, and discover Cheyenne culture from our Cheyenne friends. We guarantee a trip into Billings, Montana's largest city, for a movie, bowling or the batting cages, shopping and a stroll through the Saturday outdoor Farmers Market.